The line of her mouth did this weird pretzel thing, which was pretty funny. “I thought you were going to meet Nick here.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Well, Cooper mentioned that you two were getting close. Or ‘got pretty close to something.’ I don’t know. He flushed beet-red and started to mumble about concussions. I love him, but I don’t always understand him,” she said, frowning.
“Well, he neglected to mention the part where I told Nick that us getting close was a hallucination brought on by head injury.”
“Yeah, he did leave that part out,” Mo said, chewing on her lip. “This is why we need to spend more time together. I need unfiltered information.”
“Well, I’m sorry your makeover efforts for Nick were in vain.”
“Oh, honey, that wasn’t for Nick. We’ve been itching to do that for a while. It had to be done, for the good of mankind,” Mo told me. I frowned. Mo made a gesture toward her upper lip. “Mustaches are for porn stars and Tom Selleck, not young ladies.”
“Fuck you very much, Mo.”
“Don’t kiss my daughter with that mouth. I’m afraid of what she’ll pick up.”
I made a sour face at her as I sauntered back toward the table. As I was walking past the restroom corridor, there was a yank on my arms. I was rather proud that I didn’t spill a drop of beer as Nick pulled me into the little hallway.
“Hands! Hands!” I exclaimed, shrugging out of the hold he had on my arms. He held up his hands in a defensive position but didn’t step away. He kept his voice low, quiet, as he murmured, “Sorry, I didn’t know how else to get your attention.”
“How about ‘Hey, Maggie, how about we have a conversation that doesn’t involve lurking near a men’s room?’ “
“That probably would have been better,” he agreed. “So, I wanted to tell you, I’m in.”
“I really don’t know how to respond to that.”
He rolled his eyes. “I mean, I’m willing to give up the possibility of ever telling anyone about your family, if you let me study your pack. I want to know everything there is to know about you. It would be worth it, just to have my questions answered. I give you my word, it would be for my own personal enlightenment. I will never tell a soul.”
The intensity of his voice, the close proximity of his mouth to my ear, sent a shiver down my spine. I cleared my throat, backing away as much as the wall would allow.
He continued, “We don’t even have to tell your family what I’m doing. In fact, their behavior would probably be more natural if they didn’t know why I was there. You can always tell them we’re dating.”
“I can’t tell them that, because they know that I’m already dating Clay.”
The confident nonchalance he’d been using melted away, and he seemed honestly bewildered for a moment. “You were serious about that? I thought you were just trying to put me off at the clinic.”
“I was trying to put you off at the clinic with information that’s true. We’ve been out a few times,” I said, shrugging. “He’s a nice guy, a member of the pack. And that’s important.”
“Why?”
I looked down the corridor to make sure none of the other guests was within earshot. But given the head-splitting volume at which the band was playing, it wouldn’t matter if they were. “Fewer and fewer of us are mating with werewolves. We’re basically breeding ourselves out of existence. There are more dead-liners—that’s what we call our relatives who can’t phase—living in the village than pack members.”
“Hold on, hold on,” Nick muttered, patting his pockets for his little notebook. He settled his glasses on his nose and found a pen. He took a deep breath and smiled at me. “Explain.”
“Well, wolves mate for life,” I said in a low, soft voice. “Werewolf mates are claimed with a bite, which is sort of ceremonial, or through flat-out impregnation. Our genetic material is what you might call obsessive. Once our bloodline mixes with someone, something in our bodies just won’t let us make babies with anyone else. It’s a one-mate-only opportunity. It’s why you don’t see a lot of remarried widows of childbearing age in packs. Their new husbands won’t be able to have children of their own.”
“So, you’re all virgins when you get married?”
I waffled my hand back and forth. “Most are, but there are exceptions. We can have sex with someone and not be mated to them . . . but since werewolves, particularly the females, are hyperfertile, having sex means you’re probably going to end up pregnant either way. So most of us don’t risk knocking up a random one-night stand.”
“So, you’re a virgin.”
“I’m not talking to you about this.”
He held up his hands. “Purely scientific interest.”
“No comment,” I grumbled.